Edward Ward, A step to Stir-Bitch-Fair: with remarks upon the University of Cambridge (London: J. How, 1700). Purchased Nov. 2009.

Stourbridge fair, held annually in late August and September in a field near Barnwell Abbey outside Cambridge, was one of the great medieval fairs of Europe and was run by the University from 1589. This delightfully bawdy pamphlet tells of Edward Ward's trip to the fair in 1700, travelling from London via Ware (where he feasted on eels), Barley (where the 'bouncing Maiden-Landlady' entertained him with 'blunt conversation'), Audley End ('a famous pile of stone building'), and Trumpington (the name of which he humorously derives from trumping/farting). After admiring the Cambridge colleges, Ward gives a colourful description of the fair: 'I beheld such a number of wooden edifices, and such a multitude of gentry, scholars, tradesmen, whores, hawkers, pedlars, and pick-pockets, that it seem'd to me like an abstract of all sorts of mankind ... to show the world in epitomy.' After taking in the fishmongers, drinking dens, seamstresses and perfumiers, Ward comes to the booksellers, where he finds the famous auctioneer Edward Millington selling 'books by the hammer' and providing merry entertainment for the scholars.